Power performance improvements for high pressure ripple energy harvesting

摘要

A hydraulic pressure energy harvester (HPEH) device, which utilizes a housing in order to isolate a piezoelectric stack from the hydraulic fluid via a mechanical interface, generates power by converting the dynamic pressure within the system into electricity. Energy harvester prototypes were designed for generating low-power electricity from pressure ripples. These devices generate low-power electricity from off-resonance dynamic pressure excitation. The power produced per volume of piezoelectric material is analyzed to increase the power density; this is accomplished through evaluating piezoelectric stack characteristics, adding an inductor to the system circuit, and solving for optimal loading in order to achieve maximum power output. The prototype device utilizes a piezoelectric stack with high overall capacitance, which allows for inductance matching without using an active circuit. This work presents an electromechanical model and the experimental results of the HPEH devices using a parallel connection of inductive and resistive loads as the energy harvesting circuit. A non-ideal inductive load case is also considered and successfully modeled by accounting for the parasitic resistance of the inductive load. Various HPEH prototypes are fabricated, modeled, and compared in terms of their normalized power density levels, and milli-Watt level average power generation is demonstrated. The highest power density is reported for the single-crystal HPEH prototype.